Old Houses and Young Dreams

Those who know art will recognize the painting above as done formula-style aka amateurish in the tradition of Bob Ross. I found it down in my basement last week. It was tucked away in one of my printmaking folders and I hadn't seen it for nearly twenty years. I'm keeping it for my new place while better quality, arty-farty paintings I’ve done got sent off with the trash. The colors will go with my future decor and it reminds me of a house my husband and I almost bought and wanted to restore to its former glory. It had a round barn in the backyard---one of the few left in the state---and house was out in the middle of nowhere. It never had indoor plumbing other than a make-shift shower in the basement and a cold water tap in the kitchen. Late 1800s bathroom fixtures sat in their original shipping containers in the basement, never installed. But the person who inherited the house from a great-uncle (who built the house for his run-away bride) got nervous he wasn't asking enough, so the nephew got a realtor involved and he backed out of our deal. A year later he sold the place for $10,000 less than we offered plus he had to pay realtor fees proving that a bird in the hand really is worth two in the bush.

I think about that house from time to time and how different our lives would have been if we'd gotten our dream home. It would have changed the trajectory of our lives. The uncle lived in the kitchen and butler's pantry his entire long, lonely life and the place was so thick with dust you couldn't tell the windows were beveled glass or what kind of wood was on the floors. No furniture had ever been moved into the rest of the house. The exterior was brick with a tin roof and it was structurally as sound as the year it was built. We loved the promise of greatness that house whispered to us. We adored that barn, even the brick outhouse would have been turned into something quaint. We got to see the inside of the house again, at an open house when the restored Victorian was up for sale. It was magnificent! They had installed the copper bathtub and the toilet with its ceiling-high oak water box that were in basement crates and they added a skylight above them. My heart be still, that bathroom still makes we wish I could take a bath under the stars. Touring that house had me wondering if the reluctant bride was sitting on a cloud and saying, "Would you look at that, God, the house finally got finish!"

And then there's another painting of another empty house that needed a lot of tender love and care, this one painted my mom (below). She took up oil painting at the age I am now and she was a true disciple of learning-to-paint via a TV show on PBS. Being a somewhat snub about art back in those days, I wasn't especially fond of her work and if honesty were required here I'd admit to being a tad bit jealous because I'd taken a million and one art classes during my life and she'd had none yet people were handing her compliments right and left. I resisted the temptation to critique her work when I'd see one of her canvases though I wanted to. She had that Grandma Moses-like lack of prospective that drove me crazy.

my mom's work

Background on Mom's painting: First off I hate orange but it was a gift from Mom because she wanted each of her kids to have something she created. It hung in my closet forever---is still there today. It goes with me when I move, and will probably decorate the inside of my 4' x 8' storage unit at the end of my parking space. The old house theme was a family joke of sorts because for several years Don and I was in serious house shopping mode, had notebooks full of newspaper listings. Every Sunday morning when the realtor section came out we poured over it looked for what was new on the market. The family joke was we didn’t like any house if it had electricity, central heat and plumbing and if birds were flying in and out of broken windows, all the better. That wasn’t far from the truth. We had more dreams than common sense and we figured whatever an old house needed we could learn how to do.

We did buy a few old houses…in the form of prints we found at art shows but we never did find our dream house to restore.

And the photo below is one my husband took of an old house that was surrounded by hoarfrost the morning we saw it. It took third place in a photo contest with over 700 entries. I won’t be able to hang any of these in my new place---wall space is limited---but they might find their way onto the walls of my storage unit. I don't plan to keep much in there. No someday maybe projects but a miniature art gallery would be fun. I literally have 49 paintings, prints and silhouettes hanging in my house now that will have to be pared down to seven or eight. Trust me, I'm not looking forward to that downsizing project! ©

 

What Else Can Go Wrong?

This was supposed to be an easy week but it didn’t turn out that way. The only thing I had scheduled was a trip to my brother’s house, a haircut and a Gathering at the senior hall (which was even more fun than the launching of their first Gathering a month ago). Then on Tuesday I took a trip to the basement to check on things. Things were not good! Water was spraying out of a pipe, looking like the ‘rain’ setting on a shower head. Water was on the floor in an eight foot square area underneath the 'shower' and along the outside wall was a river thirty foot long by three foot wide. I check the basement once a week (when I remember) so who knows how long the problem was going on. I called my plumbing service and they came out three hours later. In the meantime I was having a panic attack and it never even occurred to me to do the first thing the plumber did when he came down the steps. He grabbed an empty 30 gallon plastic storage container I had near-by and put it under the 'shower.' I did trace the leaking line back across the basement to a turn-off valve near the hot water heater but it wouldn’t budge. I can’t open jars either.

The plumber had to drain the hot water heater to get the water out of the hot water recirculation line (the villain in this story) and it was hour before he got the leaking joint cut out and replaced. And since he was here I asked him if he’d have time to fix an outside faucet that I can't turn off or on without a pair of pliers. He did and you would not believe the massive ball of pollen that came out of that came out of that fitting? No wonder it didn't work. Next up was turning the water back on that comes in from the street and getting all the air bled out of the faucets. The shower sprayer in my master bath failed the test and no water would come through. An easy fix for a tall guy with tools. The filter screen had gotten clogged up with junk and since he was already standing in my shower I asked him to check out the mixer in the faucet. Lately it’s been going from cold to the hottest setting with no middle ground and it was actually on my ‘to do list’ to call a plumber to fix it. The whole episode cost $228.22 and an attack of the nerves. On the good side, if this had happened over the coming holiday weekend the bill would have been double. My dad would be proud that I found that silver lining here.

But that wasn’t the end of it of the water saga. The plumber said the standing water should disappear overnight. It didn’t which told me the cement was thoroughly saturated and I was worried about mold starting if it took too long to dry out. I called Tim, the-son-I-wish-I-had, and he brought out a wet/dry vacuum and sucked up the standing water. He’s a good friend but I still have to pay him for things like this---$50 in this case. He owns a small clean up business and he can’t afford to turn down other work to work for free for friends. Though occasionally we barter. Once I traded an 1880s set of ornate cast iron legs off an old factory machine for several hours of his time. He made a table for his kitchen out of them. (He’s got an industrial themed kitchen…lots of stainless steel and industrial ‘wire cage’ light fixtures.) My husband would have loved seeing what became of those legs. After his stroke they were a huge bone of contention when we downsized. No amount of talking would get him to agree to put them in our auction, so Tim brought them to our new house where they sat in a corner for fourteen years. 

Don would have also loved knowing that one of his favorite art prints is now framed and hanging on my brother’s living room wall. As my brother said, “It just makes the room” and he's right. He’s never had a good eye for hanging things on walls. Everything was always the wrong size or shape for the wall or hung at the wrong height and that bugs me whenever I see that in any house. But until five/six years ago he's had a wife, so I couldn’t suggest rehanging stuff without maybe causing tension. I’m glad, this time, he asked for my input in his redecorating project. It was fun.

And last but certainly not least, this week I got invaded by huge black flies. Upstairs and down. Dozens of them. The first day I killed over thirty before I lost count. The next day Tim vacuum up dozens in the basement and the third day I bought fly paper for the basement, a two pack of longer handled fly swatters than the one I had and an outdoor trap to hang by my back door, near the dog’s pen. I still can’t figure out how they all got inside. I’ve never had that happen in my life. It’s possible they came in when the plumber was going back and forth to his truck with all the doors left open. I hope so because the other possibility is that one fly laid eggs somewhere inside and I can expect another 100-500 more to hatch. I’ve been carrying a fly swatter every time I walk across the house and today I've only killed four or five. Hopefully, the worse is over. ©

NOTE: The photo above is of the print I gave my brother before it was triple matted and framed. It's probably 3 1/2 by 5 foot.